JOHNSTON — The signs are everywhere on the northern reaches of Atwood Avenue.

“No Maceroni Funeral Home,” they say.

This neighborhood has fought several funeral-home proposals in the past. Now, residents are voicing their opposition to the latest project proposed by Anthony Hamel, whose family runs the Maceroni Funeral Home in North Providence.

“This is the third time they tried to shove this down our throat,” said Louis R. Calenda, a retired firefighter who lives across from the site for the proposed funeral home, which is in close proximity to St. Robert Bellarmine Church.

Due in part to Calenda’s leadership, about 60 Johnston residents, including 41 people who live in the Atwood area between Cherry Hill Road and Greenville Avenue, have signed a petition opposing the project.

Some of those opponents spoke out earlier this month when Hamel secured the Planning Board’s recommendation for rezoning a parcel at 1770 Atwood Ave. from the R-20 designation to R-7, a category that allows funeral homes under a special-use permit.

The Town Council will consider that recommendation when it entertains the idea of rezoning the property as requested.

That’s something even Michael Berarducci — a resident who fought and lost his own campaign for a funeral home — now opposes.

Berarducci is married to Annette Berarducci, who ran for the Generaly Assembly earlier this month and lost to Rep. Deborah Fellela.

Town officials opposed the couple’s funeral home proposal. At one point, the Berarduccis took the town to court and secured a judge’s order for building permits.

But by then, Michael Berarducci said, they had lost their financing for the project.

Citing financing, Berarducci said he is no longer pursuing his own project.

Berarducci made the comment as he stood in the driveway of his one-time rival, Calenda, and listened to his neighbor assail the Maceroni family’s project.

Many of Calenda’s neighbors, including Richard Hall, 55, say the proposed funeral home will bring unwanted traffic to the area.

“The traffic will be too busy,” he said. “It’s busy now. With a funeral home it’s going to be more busy.”

Barbara Ciolfi, a 64-year-old administrative assistant, has lived in a California ranch on the four-lane road for 10 years.

She said that she and her husband fear an increase in traffic.

Calenda pointed to various passages in the town’s comprehensive plan that call for low-density residential uses only on Atwood Avenue, north of Cherry Hill Road.

“There’s a thousand things in there,” he said.

Calenda also argued that allowing a business such as a funeral home would open his neighborhood to commercial enterprises such as a pharmacy chain.

However, the R-7 designation does not clash with the comprehensive plan because it’s a residential category that makes accommodations for funeral homes, according to the town’s planner, Merrick Cook Jr. Also, the zoning category does not allow commercial enterprises such as pharmacy chains.

A funeral home is a type of residential use, he said, emphasizing the word “home.”

“A funeral home is a funeral home,” Cook said.

“It’s a business,” Calenda said in response later yesterday. “Business is business.”

mreynold@projo.com